author
Ralph Werther
b. 1874
A pioneering early-20th-century writer, activist, and autobiographer, this author wrote with unusual candor about gender variance and life on the margins in the United States. The work remains striking for how directly it speaks about identity, stigma, and survival.
2 Audiobooks
Autobiography of an Androgyne
by Ralph Werther
About the author
Best known under the names Jennie June, Ralph Werther, and Earl Lind, this American writer was born in 1874 and is now remembered as one of the earliest transgender or gender-nonconforming people in the United States to publish an autobiography. Their life details remain partly uncertain, but modern reference sources consistently connect these names to the same author.
Werther's most famous books include Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) and The Female-Impersonators (1922). These works describe personal experience, social exclusion, and the search for dignity in a society that had little understanding of gender and sexual difference.
Today, the author is valued not only for literary history but also for LGBTQ+ history. The writing offers a rare first-person record from its era, giving readers a vivid sense of how identity, performance, and resistance were lived long before modern language for these experiences became common.